A testament to Mick Lynch’s cultural impact is the scale of media coverage that his retirement as General Secretary of the RMT at the age of 63, has received. The last trade union general secretary whose retirement generated so many column inches was Len McCluskey. However, unlike McCluskey, Lynch achieved media interest because of his work industrially and not internal Labour politics: the lack of an equivalent ego is probably also a factor here.

Compared to many of his peers, Lynch was not a General Secretary for long, he was only elected to the post in 2021 (having previously covered it in 2020), but entered the public consciousness with a bang when doing his media duties for his members in the 2022 rail disputes. Throughout his, now infamous, media appearances he often appeared bemused by the line of questioning he was subjected to. This was not just evident in the mass media rounds in the national rail strikes but also in his adroit handling of media duties during the P&O scandal when he patiently informed interviewers that P&O’s actions were not facilitated by Brexit but by the UK’s own ramshackle employment laws.

In these media rounds, public speeches, and appearances in front of government select committees, while articulating a broad class-based politics grounded in community, Lynch demonstrated the simple truth that working-class people can be intelligent, articulate, and have a sharp and nuanced understanding of detail. It speaks to the paucity of our media and political environment that this was such a shock to so many. As well as this, he publicly demonstrated an understanding of the importance of the wider left’s history on a regular basis- he did after all complete a history degree at the LSE as a mature student. 

Whether it was his sometimes-ruthful observation that the then NUR had been instrumental in the founding of what became the Labour Party or his reverence for James Connolly, Lynch would often place the present moment in a broader historical context. Did his brief media fame have much of an impact on reversing the fortunes of the trade union movement? Probably not, and in part it gave rise to a misinterpretation of what constitutes successful trade union tactics (always mash the strike button), but then it was not his job to solve the movement’s problems by taking the mick out of Piers Morgan.

His job was, as he would often point out, to get the best possible deal for his members. In the national rail dispute the RMT probably managed this under the circumstances. The union was forced into fighting a rear-guard action and although the below-inflation pay increase in his own words was ‘not a great deal’ for TOC staff, Driver Only Operation (mass redundancies) was taken off the table and negotiations for future pay were devolved to individual TOCs. What would have happened at each individual TOC once the non-compulsory redundancy agreement expired is unknown, as the election of a Labour Government and its agenda of rail nationalisation means that this issue has been shelved, for now at least. Indeed, while the 25 days of strike action seemed to not have yielded the complete victory that was hoped, the RMT under Lynch had more than just the blunt tool of industrial action. It was the fulcrum of the public campaign against ticket office closures and used diplomacy, not strikes, to quietly negotiate a pay deal for rail staff with the nascent Labour Government.

The Labour Party was something with which Lynch’s public relationship with changed in the last couple of years. He went from claiming that Keir Starmer was not on the side of working people to publicly supporting Labour, citing its employment rights reforms; though he would never have likely been able to convince enough of his union to re-affiliate to the party. However, he was able to successfully ensure his Broad Left faction retained control of the RMT’s internal machinery, after initially having to step away from the NEC when he was covering the General Secretary role for Mick Cash (who had had to do the same). 

What his overall impact on the size of the union, despite strong concerted efforts with outsourced cleaners and offshore energy workers is hard to say. When he became general secretary, the membership was 81,197, in 2023 it was 78,629, the figures for the next two years have yet to be released. However, it would be wrong to cast Lynch as a purely bureaucratic creature focussed only on the immediate industrial and political needs of his union. He regularly articulated the need for the trade union movement to be in touch with the wider working-class community, and made attempts to build solidarity. Whether this was speaking at a BMA Consultant rally (where he was quick to point out the irony of a ‘union baron skinhead’ addressing middle-class professionals), attempting to organise coordinated multi-union strike action, ensuring the RMT contributed to the eventually aborted ‘Enough is Enough’ campaign, or calling for and trying to organise practical support for targeted communities during the riots of 2025. All of this was in line with the broad-based class politics that he articulated.

However, Lynch was not the idealised hero that many casual fans, after projecting their own opinions onto his media appearances, wanted him to be, he was unapologetically himself, which gave him refreshing authenticity. Many ‘progressives’ were dismayed by his and the RMT’s staunch support of Brexit (and some of the union’s other foreign policy positions), while some of the harder edges of the left found his eventual support for Labour frustrating. His view on these sections of the left was best summed up by his public declaration of ‘never trust a trot’ at a Novara Media event. Crucially though, he was willing to work with people of all stripes, despite some finding him challenging at times. For instance, at a TUC rally in the summer of 2022, he clearly made his displeasure known that the RMT contingent had ended up towards the back of the crowd when it was his turn to speak, and he needed to be placated by the then General Secretary of the TUC, Frances O’Grady. 

At the end of the day, as General Secretary of the RMT, Mick Lynch was, in his own words, ‘a working-class bloke leading a trade union dispute about jobs, pay and conditions of service’. This is how the public will remember him, even if, for a time, he represented more than this. While his retirement is a loss to the movement, he would most likely be the first to rail against the idea of being irreplaceable (no individual is greater than the collective), and point out, as he did in speeches: ‘the past we inherit, the future we build’. For the RMT, that future is now someone else’s.